A Defining Moment:
Museums at the Crossroads
The Heartland Is Alive!
By Julia Beizer and Amanda Kraus
This article is the first in a series on our next annual meeting city: Indianapolis.
Indianapolis became known as the Crossroads of America in the mid-19th century, after four major rail lines centralized their rail service in the city, creating the nation’s first Union Station. The moniker is still fitting today. When delegates converge there for the 2005 AAM annual meeting, they will find a city that values its burgeoning contemporary arts as well as its sports heritage, that supports the world’s largest children’s museum, several historic houses, and such regional specialties as the NCAA Hall of Champions and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum.
The pedestrian-friendly downtown radiates out from Monument Circle, where stands the 284-foot limestone Soldiers and Sailors Monument—the nation’s first tribute to the common soldier. While honoring the past with more memorials than any city in America outside of Washington, D.C., the city’s forward-thinking mayor has designated five cultural districts to ensure a thriving arts community.
We chose to start our series on Indianapolis by highlighting a museum that honors the area’s past, Conner Prairie, and one that prepares its future, the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.
Set on more than 1,400 acres just north of Indianapolis, Conner Prairie introduces approximately 350,000 yearly visitors to “1836 Prairietown,” a recreated village that portrays life in Indiana during that era. One of six major buildings is a two-story brick house, once home to the family of William Conner, who lived on the land from 1800-37 and helped take the area from wilderness to settled state.
The property was saved from ruin in the mid-1930s by area businessman and philanthropist Eli Lilly. Committed to public education, Lilly allowed tours of the historic area and, in his
1964 will, left the house and original 58 acres to Earlham College. (The living-history museum is now exploring operating independently.) Several other historic buildings were moved to Conner Prairie as its visitorship grew 10-fold in the late 1960s.
Recently, Conner Prairie has made a name for itself by pushing the envelope with its immersive “Live the Prairie” programs that don’t shy away from harsh, historical facts. “Follow the North Star,” for example, is a simulation of the underground railroad experience in which visitors take on the role of runaway slaves. During the 90-minute nighttime program, participants must negotiate a mile of rough terrain, asking for help along the way. Interpretive staff portray the sympathetic and hostile characters they encounter. Other programs offer a chance to live for a weekend on the 19th-century farm or make a hearthside supper in Conner House.
One of Conner Prairie’s long-running education programs became a permanent fixture when Lenape Indian Camp and McKinnen’s Trading Post opened in 2000. Key to the project was Mike Pace, a member of the Delaware tribe who relocated from Oklahoma to establish the Indian Camp.
Pace’s involvement with Conner Prairie began 13 years ago when he came to Indiana for a week each fall to teach area schoolchildren about Delaware traditions. In 2000 he took the opportunity to establish the permanent Lenape camp, where he is now an interpreter, because “there is little talk in Indiana history about Native Americans. In Oklahoma we have 39 tribes and most people see Native Americans quite often. But here there is so little access to Native American history.”
The Conner family figures prominently in Delaware Indian History. William Conner was one of the first interpreters among the Delaware and the settlers and married a Native American woman, Mekinges. Their son, John Conner, later became principal chief of the Delaware tribe in 1858. This history is not all harmonious, however, as treaties signed under both John and William forced the removal of the Delaware tribe to Missouri, Oklahoma, and other points west. In that way, “the Delaware people were always on the frontier,” says Pace. He brings this heritage to Conner Prairie. “We try to promote our culture to our own people and non-Indians. The best way to learn is on the face-to-face basis. . . . I do it for Conner Prairie and for myself, to promote Delaware history.”
“Some people think Indians are all dead,” said Pace. His programs breathe life into a culture that was very much alive on the Conner property well before the settlers arrived. It appears to be working. “I’ve had kids come back the next year or come back with the family and they always remember the words I’ve taught them. Some kids come over and hug me.”
More than 100,000 artifacts, 433,000 square feet, and 1 million visitors a year make the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis the largest youth museum in the world. Since its founding by social leader Mary Stewart Carey in 1925, the museum has grown from a tiny headquarters in a northside carriage house into the multi-million dollar complex it currently occupies. Committed to its community, the museum has pledged $3 million to ensure the safety of the surrounding neighborhood and reduces or eliminates admission fees for more than 47,000 visitors per year.
The Children’s Museum’s commitment to its audience is evident in its “What if . . .?” exhibits. In 1989, museum staff posed the question, “If you could explore anything, what would it be?” to local schoolchildren. Three years later, this survey resulted in new exhibits on dinosaurs, coral reefs, and mummies.
In 2004, an expanded dinosaur exhibit dubbed “Dinosphere” opened to immerse children in the Cretaceous period, show them the largest collection of juvenile fossils in the world, and teach them the tricks of the fossil-preparing trade in the Paleo Prep Lab. For those less-inclined to the prehistoric, the museum’s Welcome Center contains North America’s largest water clock, a 33-foot, 140-piece complex of glass vials, vacuums, and colored liquid that manages to keep perfect time. Other attractions include rides beneath a starry ceiling on the museum’s carousel or trips to faraway places via the 50,000-piece collection of folk objects and toys in the Passport to the World gallery, which explores celebration and communication in many different cultures.
The Indianapolis Children’s Museum wasn’t always the complex institution it is today, with a staff of nearly 400. Just ask Jeanette Booth, who has worked in the education department for 34 years.
“The museum was small when I first began working here!” she laughs. Booth reminisces about the early days, when all staff pitched in to develop exhibits and work with school groups. “Now people are hired for much more specific responsibilities.”
In her current position Booth develops programming for area schools and educators. “With all the emphasis on testing and standards, teachers are looking for us to offer programming that will complement what they’re teaching in the classroom,” she
says. The Famous Hoosiers program, for example, complements the state’s 4th grade social studies requirements. The museum’s brochures and web site help teachers match the museum's offerings with their curriculum.
While school kids are still a core audience, the museum has placed a new emphasis on family learning. Booth describes the concept as providing all members of the family with “the opportunity to learn from each other.”
Indianapolis Fun Facts:
• Indianapolis has been home to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Jane Pauley, David Letterman, and Steve McQueen.
• The United States’ first interstate highway—the Historic National Road—spans the state of Indiana, passing through downtown Indianapolis. Government buildings line the road as do many of cultural attractions, including the Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis Zoo, Monument Circle, and White River State Park.
• Completed in 1886, Indianapolis’s City Market acted as the town center. In the early 1900s, fresh meat, fish, poultry, dairy, baked goods, and local produce were abundantly available inside while concerts and political rallies took place outside. After World War II, competition from suburban grocery stores rose and the City Market struggled to remain relevant. A restoration effort in the late 1960s yielded the site’s placement on the National Register of Historic Landmarks in 1974 and today, the market once again thrives as a center of commerce.
• The oldest surviving pathology lab in America is now the Indiana Medical History Museum. Constructed in Indianapolis in 1895, the building is now on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated an official project of Save America’s Treasures in 2001. The museum’s 15,000 artifacts relate to the dawn of modern medicine and psychiatry.
• Plans for the Indiana Museum of African-American History are underway. Indiana Black Expo, Inc., one of the founding organizations, reports that the project is still in the early planning stages but they’re eyeing locations in Indianapolis’s White River State Park.
